Category Archives: Learnings from Mediation

Detroit Bankruptcy Mediation, Part II

September 19, 2014 – 5:40 pm

I wrote in April about the mediation team being used to facilitate the Detroit bankruptcy. I was intrigued about how it would work, and impressed at the novelty of using mediators. I’m now realizing that these folks are not “mediators” in the normal sense of the word. As we read more about the active efforts […]

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Detroit Bankruptcy Using Mediation

April 28, 2014 – 2:43 pm

The bankruptcy proceedings for the City of Detroit are making good use of mediation. Judge Steven Rhodes, who is overseeing the bankruptcy, appointed U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen as lead mediator last August, and Judge Rosen assembled a team of mediators, comprised of four federal judges as well as Attorney Gene Driker, an esteemed Michigan […]

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Guns and Mediation, Again

December 11, 2013 – 10:13 am

It happened again last week: a shooting after a mediation. As a divorcing couple was leaving the attorney-mediator’s office in Manchester, Tennessee, last Wednesday, the wife pulled out a handgun and shot her estranged husband. The husband, Dr. Henry Bartee, is recovering in hospital, and the wife, Brenda Bartee, has been charged with attempted murder. […]

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Should Mediators Speak to the Media?

April 16, 2013 – 2:49 pm

The parents of Adam Lanza, the young man responsible for the Sandy Hook murders, were divorced in 2009, after mediation. After the massacre last December, reporters tracked down the mediator, Paula Levy, and apparently asked her some questions. She was willing to answer them, at least generally. What is a mediator’s obligation to preserve confidentiality […]

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Guns in Mediation

February 1, 2013 – 3:41 pm

The nightmare that mediators have long dreaded has come true: a mediation party pulled out a gun this week and shot the other party at the close of a mediation. The parties had a contract dispute, and the plaintiff, a man named Arthur Harmon, had sued the defendant, Steven Singer, for $17,000. The mediation took […]

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